Dear Editor
It seems lately that every time Barnaby Joyce gets a chance, he delivers a rhetorical rant against renewables. While there is no empirical evidence to support his ravings, there is, however, a valid reason for it.
That is the time-honored tactic of the Liberal National Party (LNP) of dividing the community, making one group appear the victim and the other the aggressor, with the LNP being the savior.
Joyce portrays urban dwellers as enjoying the benefits of renewable energy at the expense of their rural cousins. He claims that farmland is being ruined and roads destroyed, all to benefit city people. Joyce, of course, will save the rural community if they vote for him.
Classic propaganda. Create an aggressor, a victim, and a savior out of nothing.
He attempts to validate this approach by claiming that, while the Liberals received the drubbing of a lifetime in the recent Federal election, the Nationals came out unscathed. Not quite — the seat of Calare that the Nationals won in 2022 was lost to independent Andrew Gee, a former National. Their deputy leader in the Senate, Perin Davey, lost her West Australian Senate spot. And, of course, Jacinta Price took her National spot in the Senate and gave it to the Liberals, leaving the Nationals one short of party status in the upper house.
Joyce is trying to save some of the furniture for the next election because the Nationals are worried. The community generally sees the LNP as one party, and the shellacking that the Liberals received was due to National Party policy as much as their own. The Liberal strategy of taking outer urban seats from Labor failed dismally, so at the next election, their best bet is to shed themselves of National Party policies or take National seats for their own. The conundrum being that the Liberals and Nationals need each other to govern, as there has only ever been one majority Liberal Federal government; every other time, it has been in minority with National support.
The Liberals are in a sinking boat with the Nationals and floundering in the doldrums without them.
The Nationals are worried, and they are worried about the Liberals.
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